Netherlands dance maestro San Holo recently sat down with Aussie legend Alison Wonderland for a candid, in-depth conversation about making music in the time of COVID.
The near-hour long conversation saw the pair delve into everything from creativity in quarantine, yearning to perform live, and the misunderstood complexity of EDM. You can watch it below.
Check out San Holo and Alison Wonderland discuss creativity in the time of COVID
San Holo burst into our collective consciousness with his scorching debut record, album1, an innovative dance album that drew from a palette of trap 808s, saccharine indie-pop melodies and thunderous bass drops. The record saw Holo enlist the help of acts like Bipolar Sunshine and James Vincent McMorrow to bring his masterpiece to life.
album1 went on to be a critical and commercial juggernaut, debuting on the Billboard Dance/Electronics Album chart at No. 7 and topping the iTunes Electronic Charts in the US, Canada and other countries. It would go on to win Best Dance Album at The Netherlands’ Edison Pop awards and Best Electronic Album at the International Dance Music Awards.
Now, San Holo is back with his second record, bb u ok?, a sprawling 20-track exploration of human connection. Holo and his collaborators leant heavily into nostalgia when assembling bb u ok? using cell phone microphones to weave a rich tapestry of chirping birds, barking dogs and whatever else they encountered.
Holo muses that it’s an album that transports him back to high school. “I cannot play those songs without thinking about that time, and the way I felt,” he says. “The way the airbnb looked, the late night writing sessions in the garden, the friends that came over, It’s all very vivid for me.”
bb u ok? captures the strange magic of being a teenager during a very particular time. Enlisting the help of genre heroes American Football and Rivers Cuomo of Weezer. It’s angst grown up.
bb u ok? will arrive on Jun 4th. You can listen to the titular track below.
